Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Kevin, we hardly knew you. Millar had a somewhat good rep for hitting big homers and he did hit 7 game-tying, a very good percentage. But he hit a ton of homers with nobody on base and hit nearly 15% of his Oriole homers when the O's were down by four runs or more...the ultimate in garbage time.

If not for one game ending home run against Boston in 2007, Millar would score somewhere in the Jay Gibbons range. Instead, he finishes with a slightly less lackluster score.

BHI - 117

Miguel Tejada - 102 Oriole Career Homers

While Tejada's "truthiness" is pretty suspect these days, his bat was not...at least early in his Oriole career. In fact, most of the good scores for Tejada are as a result of his monster 34 HR, 150 RBI 2004 Oriole debut.

The good: Above average scores in go ahead shots and a walk-off

The bad: Nearly a third of his Oriole homers came during Garbage Time and nothing else stands out.

Just like every aspect of his Oriole career, Tejada's BHI starts out with a splash, then peters out into mediocrity at the end.

BHI - 218

Mickey Tettleton -52 Oriole Career Homers

Tettleton is one of my favorite players of all-time so I was pleased that he scored so well and dismayed by something I realized for the first time.

Mickey hit a very low percentage of his longballs during Garbage Time (19%...one of the lowest scores in this excercise) and a whopping 54% of his homers either tied the game or put the Orioles out in front. The only thing that keeps him from topping the list is his above average percentage of solo shots.

What I realized was this: It was October 3rd 1990. The Blue Jays (the team who had edged out the "Why Not?" Orioles for the division a year before) trailed the Red Sox by one game for the AL East lead heading into the the last day of the season. The score was tied with two outs in the bottom of the ninth...when Tettleton took Tom Henke deep to right center ending the Blue Jays playoff hopes.

In the offseason, Tettleton was traded to the Tigers for SP Jeff Robinson. Tettleton would hit 30+ homers in four of the next five seasons while Robinson would continue to suck until he was out of baseball.

That's right. Tettleton's last hit as a Baltimore Oriole was a walkoff homer with two outs in the ninth. Ouch.